A Report on Romany Children Submitted to the UN

14. 9. 2005

On September 13, the European Roma Rights (ERRC) submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) concerning Roma children's rights in Hungary. The CRC will formally review Hungary's compliance with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child in January 2006.

The ERRC comments focus on several general issues: the 2003 Hungarian anti-discrimination law, the lack of precise data on Roma population in the country, forced evictions and racial discriminations against Roma.

Concerning Romany children, the ERRC focuses its attention on the worrying phenomenon of high rates of removal of children from their families. For example in 2002, the number of children in the special state care was 17,813, large part of them are Roma.

As the education is an issue very often mentioned in the context of Roma, also this ERRC's latest report calls to attention for the rate of racial segregation in schools is very high as well as the differences in rates of advancement between children coming from schools with greater or lesser percentages of Romany children.

The summary of the ERRC on Hungarian Roma children is available at http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=2385.